“As the ‘Un-carrier’, our promise is simple,” said T-Mobile USA CEO John Legere in the company’s Q4 2012 earnings report. “You will see us put customers at the center of everything we do going forward, and that means giving them fair and simple wireless experiences in a way that other carriers never have before.”

It’s near impossible to talk about AT&T or Verizon without throwing an obscenity-laden tantrum and complaining of ridiculous billing practices, poor coverage (in AT&T’s case), or hellish customer service. Both carriers restrict what devices on their network are able to do (unless legal action is threatened), whether it’s disabling hotspot functionality unless customers pay a surcharge each month or installing “crapware” on otherwise pristine smartphones.

Contrast that with T-Mobile’s decision to enable the Samsung Galaxy Note II’s dormant LTE capabilities via a software update. T-Mobile didn’t have the network in place to handle this functionality before, so it was turned off. Now that it can support the feature, it’ll be turned on. It’s a small, simple thing that should be expected of carriers but goes against what AT&T and Verizon have done with other devices.

In some ways, T-Mobile has assumed a startup-like position in the US. It has identified problems consumers have with incumbent carriers, from high costs to the fear of a long-term commitment and a desire to not have their devices handicapped for no reason besides lining the carriers’ pockets.

And, of course, there’s the staple of modern startup culture: The power of mergers, both failed and successful. Take the botched AT&T deal from 2011: T-Mobile walked away from the deal with new spectrum covering the West Coast, with sprinklings of spectrum in the Midwest and East Coast as well.

Or take, instead, the MetroPCS deal, which, if approved, will further extend T-Mobile’s coverage and increase its retail presence. Oh, and a 40 percent increase in its available spectrum, which will allow the combined carrier to provide an even more reliable (and potentially faster) network than before.

T-Mobile won’t even screw over MetroPCS customers, whose phones utilize CDMA technologies instead of the GSM standard used by T-Mobile, AT&T, and international carriers, promising to support those devices until 2015. The fact that there isn’t a “Good Guy T-Mobile” meme yet is just astounding.

Whether or not any of this will make a difference depends on how long T-Mobile is willing to wait for customers bound to two-year contracts to switch from existing carriers and Americans’ ability to do the math and get over the larger upfront costs of an unsubsidized smartphone.

It’s refreshing to see a carrier make long-term, consumer-friendly bets, however. AT&T and Verizon are an effective duopoly in the US, and have been able to enact policies that benefit them while screwing consumers time and time again. Now that the No. 4 carrier — or, as Legere says, the “Un-carrier” — has started thinking like a startup and is barreling ahead with improvements, potential mergers, and new networks, that could finally change.

“For all the clumsy rhetorical lip service [former Yahoo News head] Guy Vidra pays to The New Republic’s hallowed intellectual traditions, this is what his vision of a nimble digital news product finally translates into: a vaguely journalistic veneer strategically designed to conceal a rancid interior of ‘elevated’ advertising.”

Indian e-commerce company Flipkart is said to be raising $600 million in its latest bid to compete with Amazon. The company is also said to have garnered a higher valuation with this funding round — quite the feat, considering it was previously valued at around $11.5 billion. [Source: The Economic Times]

Here comes another unicorn: Sprinklr, a New York-based marketing company, has raised $46 million at a $1.17 billion valuation. The funds will be used to help the 700-person company expand its marketing platform. [Source: Fortune]

Curator, the tool Twitter created so the media could find and share tweets with its audience, is now available to the public. Because if there’s anything people wanted to see more of, it’s tweets randomly inserted into blog posts, television spots, and other forms of media. [Source: TechCrunch]

A court in France has decided not to ban Uber’s low-cost services until the country’s highest appeals court, or its supreme court, weigh in on the constitutionality of a new transport law. [Source: The Wall Street Journal]

Tinder is refocusing on its spam-fighting efforts in the wake of reports that movie studios are using the service to promote their movies, scammers are attempting to steal information via the app, and pranksters have created tools that trick heterosexual men into flirting with each other. [Source: The Verge]

Uber offers drivers whose accounts have been deactivated a choice: attend a class that requires them to pass an exam, or take a class that doesn’t. The latter has been informed by Uber employees, and the company has sent thousands of drivers to it, according to a report from BuzzFeed. Why is that a problem? Because Uber isn’t supposed to provide its drivers with formal training; doing so makes them bona fide employees, not independent contractors. [Source: BuzzFeed]

Flipboard users will now be able to collect articles and share them via private magazines visible only to members of certain groups. The feature is aimed at students working in the same class, companies sharing press coverage, and other groups that might want an easy way to share Web pages with each other without having to use public tools like Facebook or Twitter. [Source: Flipboard]

T-Mobile has tasked its customers with creating a real-world coverage map that makes it easier to tell where its service works and where it doesn’t. Instead of guessing at where its customers will get service — which is what other carriers do, the company claims — it’s asking people to verify its predictions so it can be more honest with consumers. [Source: T-Mobile]

Amazon isn’t happy that the Federal Aviation Administration wants to restrict how, when, and where it tests the drones it hopes will deliver packages some time in the future. So it’s opened a secret test facility in British Columbia where it can operate without pesky regulators worrying about drones falling out of the sky and hurting bystanders. [Source: The Guardian]

GitHub has been the target of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack over the last few days, perhaps because the Chinese government wants to prevent anti-censorship tools hosted on the service from spreading. The company now says that it’s able to operate despite the attacks, albeit with intermittent outages. [Source: Reuters]